01.30.07
Colbert and Wikipedia
Last night Stephen Colbert took on Wikipedia again, asking his viewers to edit the Reality article to say “Reality has become a commodity”. He was hoping to reprise his previous successes with the African elephant article, but it didn’t work out so well for Colbert. Check out the article history. The article became “reality becomes a commodity” at 11:39 PM EST, just as Colbert gave his report. Within one minute, the article was reverted and protected so that only administrators could edit it. There’s been no damage since. An article for wikilobbying, the day’s word, also appeared but it was immediately deleted. Wikipedia doesn’t let ordinary users view deleted articles’ histories, so I have no idea what this one said.
In the end, the articles were vandalized for less than one minute total, and the guy couldn’t even get Colbert’s phrase quite right. Colbert definitely won the African elephant round, but I think this one goes to Wikipedia. It’ll be interesting to see if Stephen C mentions this again and how he spins it. Nice work, Wikipedia!